


Winterblumen

by blanketed_in_stars



Category: Original Work
Genre: (just a mention tbqh), Bakery, Gen, Germany, Holocaust, Refugees, Winter, holocaust survivor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-10
Updated: 2016-11-10
Packaged: 2018-08-30 03:22:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8516527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blanketed_in_stars/pseuds/blanketed_in_stars
Summary: All the shiny doorknobs watch as the woman slows, turns, stops. One window has no display; she stares through the lightly frosted glass as some sort of revelation breaks across her face. Beside her, the little girl stamps her feet and her breath makes clouds in the air. She tugs on the sleeve hanging down. They go inside.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I rarely write original fiction so this is a bit odd. It's a reward for an older woman who donated to my study abroad fund; she asked for "a short, short, short story about a visit to a bakery in a small German town." Love you, Donna, here ya go <3

They moved in yesterday; the people who settled them here are gone, leaving phone numbers and an urge to call if anything happens, but it’s hard to know what counts as _happening_ here, in a little town sheltered by the hills and buried not just in snow but its own muffling past. They leave footprints when they step outside today.

It is not the first time the town has seen pinched faces, wide eyes, one hand clasped tightly in another. The streets know the touch of faltering feet. Even the storefront windows seem to recognize the sight of the pair as they wander down the street, and glint in the afternoon sunlight as if in friendly greeting.

All the shiny doorknobs watch as the woman slows, turns, stops. One window has no display; she stares through the lightly frosted glass as some sort of revelation breaks across her face. Beside her, the little girl stamps her feet and her breath makes clouds in the air. She tugs on the sleeve hanging down. They go inside.

What hits them first, the scent of the bread or the sound of the music? It sounds grainy and golden, as if from a record player: _donaj, donaj, donaj, daj..._ The little girl starts bouncing immediately. _Don’t touch anything,_ her mother tells her, and lets go of her hand. She runs off immediately.

The woman tucks her hands in her armpits and shivers, though there is warmth here. She cannot shake the feeling that someone or something is watching her, and though the sensation is not a new one, she didn’t expect it to follow her all the way into her new life. But for once it is not in her head—an older woman emerges from the back of the shop and takes up her place behind the counter.

This new woman, she is like every other person they have met so far in this country: apparently grown out of the hills themselves, with eyes like the clouds. Her hands are also knobbed and chapped, though that may just be the winter. “I don't think I've seen you before," she says. "Are you new?” Her voice is a creaky door, but kind.

“Yes,” the woman says, “I am from—” but she stops. It has just occurred to her: she does not know the name of her own country in this language. It is a serious oversight and she wonders how she ever forgot to ask. “I am Asimah,” she says instead. She points down the street. “I live there.”

“Salbeistraße?” The old woman smiles. “I live just past the church.”

Asimah nods; she has seen the church, a tiny chapel that must have been here for centuries, nestled into the streets like a pearl in the palm of the land. She thinks she will have to go inside someday and see the paintings.

Into her silence, the old woman says, “My name is Eleonore. It’s very nice to meet you.” She rubs her fingers over her knuckles. “May I help you? Would you like anything?” She gestures to the display case, full of artfully frosted pastries.

“Oh!” Asimah laughs at herself for forgetting what kind of shop this is, and moves to take a closer look. “They are beautiful,” she tells Eleonore, and it’s true. Miniature flowers cover the flaky dough so that some items look like veritable bouquets. But the masterpiece is a cake covered in white: tiny snowflakes, impossibly delicate, that glitter in the soft light. She sighs before she can stop herself. “Did you make that?”

“Yes, indeed!” Eleonore watches as she leans closer.

“And all the flowers too?”

“Oh, no,” Eleonore says, “that’s my grandson, Basti. He doesn’t have the hands for snowflakes, but he can do all the _Blümchen.”_ She turns towards the back and calls through the door, with surprising volume, “Basti! The woman likes your flowers!” But there is no response. _“Ach,”_ she says, “they never listen.”

As if on cue, the little girl presses her face to the glass of the display case, the better to see all the colorful designs. _Mama,_ she says, _can we plant one?_

 _They aren’t real,_ Asimah tells her, and gently pulls her away from the glass, but it’s too late: there are ten fingerprints and one little nose-print directly in front of the pastries. “I’m so sorry,” she says.

But Eleonore only smiles more widely, the skin around her eyes crinkling in memory of decades’ worth of laughter. “Is she yours?”

Asimah nods. “Tell Eleonore your name,” she says to her daughter. When the girl only shuffles her feet and looks fixedly downward, she switches to their native tongue: _She’s very nice, tell her what you’re called._

After another glance at the cakes, the girl blinks up at Eleonore. “Hala,” she says shyly. “I’m five years cold. I mean old.” She giggles when Asimah laughs.

Eleonore comes around the counter and slowly crouches to be on Hala’s level. “Do you like the snow?” she asks.

Hala thinks seriously about it for a moment, then shakes her head.

“Is it too cold for you?”

“Too wet,” Hala says. “It gets in my shoes.”

Looking up at Asimah, Eleonore frowns. “You come from a place without snow.” It isn’t a question. “You can put plastic bags in your shoes to keep your feet dry.” She turns back to Hala. “I’ve lived here all my life. I know all the tricks.” But there is something sad in her eyes as she says it.

“We have no bags,” Asimah says. Then she shrugs. “But we will find some. We are going shopping today.”

“You can warm up in here for now,” Eleonore says, and asks Hala, “Would you like a cookie?”

“Oh, no—” Asimah rushes, holding a hand out and downwards as if to stop the words.

“It’s all right,” Eleonore assures her. “Would you?” she asks Hala again. The little girl nods vigorously. “Well then,” she says, “you will have to be strong and help me up.”

Hala looks thrilled to be so important, and holds Eleonore's hand while she gets back to her feet, leaning much more heavily on the countertop. “A cookie,” Hala reminds her then, as if she fears it might have been forgotten in the last fifteen seconds.

“Which one?” Eleonore holds up a cautioning finger. “Take your time! It's an important decision!”

“Please,” Asimah says quietly, leaning in, speaking almost in a whisper, “it isn't so important. She doesn't need a cookie.”

“I don't mind at all—”

Asimah shakes her head. “We do not have enough money for cookies,” she explains. A faint flush colors her fawn-brown skin a deeper shade. “I can't pay for it.”

“Forgive me,” Eleonore says, just as softly, but with a stern backing of steel behind the words: “If you tried to pay me for this I would take personal offense.”

“But—why?”

“That one!” Hala points to a orange-and-blue confection complete with icing butterflies. Then she glances at her mother. “Please,” she adds.

“An excellent choice,” Eleonore tells her. She removes the cookie from the case and hands it to Hala without ceremony.

“What do you say?” Asimah says, holding her by the sleeve before she can run away with it.

“Thank you!”

“You're very welcome.” Eleonore beams at her as she bounces off. She says to Asimah without looking at her, “She has a remarkable laugh.”

“A what laugh?”

“Remarkable.” Eleonore pauses. “A laugh that is worth listening to.”

“Oh.” Asimah smiles and turns to watch her daughter as well. “She does.” She shakes her head. “I am... amazed, the things she does. And says. She has learned so much faster than I have. She would know what 'remarkable' means.”

Eleonore frowns. “In answer to your question,” she says slowly, “I gave her the cookie because I know what it feels like to be cold and alone in a strange place and not to know what will happen to you next.” She gives a short sigh. “So what kind of cookie would _you_ like?”

“None,” Asimah says at once, “thank you.” She bites her lip, as if reluctant to speak.

Both women are leaning on the counter; now Eleonore pushes off of it and starts flouring the surface. “My Basti, he asks me why I still run this bakery when I could be living somewhere warmer by now—somewhere without all of the cows, going by in the mornings and making enough racket with their bells to raise the dead. Ha!” She shakes her head.

“Why do you stay?” Asimah asks when several seconds go by without an explanation.

Eleonore throws dough onto the floured counter and begins to knead it. “I will tell you that if you will tell me where you’re from.”

“I don’t know the word for my country,” Asimah admits.

“Home is more than a word,” Eleonore says. “Tell me what makes it home to you.”

Asimah wonders at the present tense; so much of her life now has been working to forget, to move forward, but of course it is still a part of her—she sighs. “The road to my house,” she says, “and the rug on the front step. The flowers my husband would put on the table for when I came home. I was a publisher, you know. It was a good job.” Then she shakes her head. “Also—the days when I would bake with my sisters.” She smiles down at the flour that has settled to coat her hands. “It smelled like this.”

Eleonore smiles too. “Tell me more about your sisters.”

“Oh, well, I have three. They are all older and they have their own families. It was nice to spend time together in the kitchen, like a holiday.”

“Where do they live now?”

“I don't know,” Asimah says, then looks almost as if she is surprised by the words. “And now it is your turn,” she says quickly. “Why are you staying here?”

Rather than answer right away, Eleonore turns and runs her hands under the faucet, removing the flour and bits of dough from her fingers. After several seconds she shuts the water off and takes a towel, drying her hands slowly, still facing away. At last she says, “When I stepped off of the train in this place—seventy years ago, now—I did not know where my family was either. We were separated when they took us to the camps.”

Asimah glances at her, startled, and then looks away again. “I'm sorry—”

“I made my peace with that,” Eleonore replies, not harshly. “I even found my brother again. He lives in Füssen now.” She replaces the towel and turns around again. “But I didn't know that when I first came into this bakery, such a tiny little shop, to start my life over.” She goes into the back, out of sight, but her voice still carries to where Asimah stands. “I thought I had nothing. And then I smelled the bread, and made it, and sold it, and then I had something.”

Alone at the counter, Asimah traces a pattern in the flour dust. She opens her mouth as if to speak, but stays silent, her eyes on her daughter as the little girl makes faces in the window-glass, still munching on her cookie.

“What is your favorite color?” comes Eleonore's voice, now slightly muffled.

“Oh—” Asimah frowns. “Red?”

“Thank you.” There is a pause, and then—“I've built everything on what I have here, even though it was nothing at all in the beginning. I have lost my taste for starting over again.” Eleonore comes out of the door again with something small in her hands, wrapped in brown paper. “And I don't need to,” she adds, smiling. “This is home, cow bells and all. It is no Rzepin, but like I said, home doesn't come from the name of a place.”

For a moment, neither of them say anything, and in the bakery there is no sound but Hala's shoes on the old wooden floor. “Do you miss it?” Asimah asks at last, her voice hushed.

“Oh,” Eleonore says, “every day.” She nods slowly. “Especially the bialys with garlic. I think you know how it is.” She gestures around at the bakery. “You can't escape the smell of home.”

“No,” Asimah agrees. “But—” She falters. “I would—I would like not to miss it so much.” She sighs. “It makes me sad.”

Eleonore reaches over and covers Asimah's hand with her own. “I hope if you learn how, you will tell me,” she says. “For now, have a cookie.” She proffers the paper-wrapped package.

Hesitant, Asimah takes it. Beneath the wrapping is a cookie in the shape of a rose, with icing so red that it could almost be alive. “I can’t eat it,” she says. “It’s too beautiful.”

“You’re lucky that Basti isn’t here,” Eleonore chuckles. “Eat it when you get home, or wherever you are going.”

“But then it would be gone,” Asimah says, though she smiles in spite of herself.

“Dear,” Eleonore chuckles, “that is the whole point. Beautiful things are made to be enjoyed.” She pats Asimah’s arm, then says, “And we can always make you another.”

It looks as if she might protest, but Asimah only grins and looks back at the cookie.

“You have one too!” Hala squeals, and comes tearing across the tiny shop. “Let me see!” Asimah bends down to give her a better view, and together they peer at the flower. “Is it good?”

Eleonore laughs. “Now you have no choice!”

Asimah rolls her eyes and takes a bite of the cookie. “It's good,” she says, sounding almost sad, and looks up at Eleonore. “But now I've ruined it.”

“Haven't you been listening?” Eleonore shakes her head as Asimah gets to her feet. “Simply changing things doesn't mean they're no longer good. And don't you like it better now that you've tasted it?”

Without answering, Asimah looks down at the cookie, crumbling slightly now and missing the cup of its petals. Her gaze is pensive. Then she blinks up at Eleonore again with a smile at the edges of her mouth. “Do you know the best way to the pharmacy?” she asks.

Eleonore nods and begins to explain the sequence of streets and intersections. When she waves good-bye, the door swings shut and the little bell jingles a farewell. Not quite so cold as before, the little pair make their way along the street, and the thickly falling snow fills in their footprints as they go.


End file.
